The Biden administration is not doing enough to punish universities that fail to disclose donations from countries with adversarial regimes.
The Biden administration is not doing enough to punish universities that fail to disclose donations from countries with adversarial regimes.
T he Biden administration is letting American universities break federal law by underreporting the money they receive from foreign donors. Since Biden took office, universities have failed to disclose at least $1 billion in foreign donations. Worse still, these unreported funds were disproportionately from authoritarian regimes such as those in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
These are the latest findings of my new research, published by the National Association of Scholars. Universities are required by law to report foreign funds worth at least $250,000 per calendar year to the Department of Education. But when the Trump administration investigated a dozen elite universities in 2019, it turned out they had neglected to report more than $6.5 billion from countries such as China, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. As a result, universities were under a harsh magnifying glass, and for a while it seemed like reporting would be taken more seriously.
But even in the years after the Trump administration’s investigations, I found that universities continued to evade the law. For instance, a handful of universities across the country didn’t report millions of dollars they received from Chinese company ByteDance for race-based scholarship funds. I wanted to see just how much universities continued to evade the law.
I filed over 100 public-records requests to universities and state agencies across the country, comparing their responses to the federal data. It turns out that the Trump administration’s tough approach resulted in universities reporting more to the federal government than they reported in the public-records files I received. But after Biden took office, many universities returned to the status quo. Under the Biden administration, the Education Department missed $1 billion in foreign funds received by the universities in my sample. This is a conservative estimate based on information from just over 70 institutions, primarily public ones.
The missing funds were also more likely to come from authoritarian countries, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. A recent investigation from the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party further supports my findings. The committee found that UC Berkeley and Georgia Tech failed to report $22 million and $17 million, respectively, from sources in China.
It’s troubling that the federal government remains largely unaware of how much countries that pose great national-security risks to the U.S. fund our universities. The Saudi Arabian and Chinese governments use their sponsored students to steal our research. They also place speech restrictions on what students can say about their home countries, impeding academic freedom and cultural exchange.
The Biden administration’s carelessness towards foreign influence in our universities doesn’t stop there. This summer, the Education Department reduced transparency efforts by closing its public portal, citing a vaguely worded “contract change.” When I attempted to get answers, an Education Department employee told me that no specialist was available, despite contact information still being listed on the department’s website.
Early in Biden’s term, the department prematurely shut down investigations into several institutions. Today, it seems like no one in the department is actively ensuring that universities comply with federal law.
The Biden administration’s actions demonstrate the urgent need to bolster Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965, the provision in federal law that requires universities to report foreign funds. Amendments are required to give the law real power. Federal lawmakers should adopt measures from states such as Florida and Louisiana, which impose a 105 percent penalty on unreported funds. Penalties should increase significantly when universities fail to report funds from adversarial nations such as China. Such punishments could help prevent any administration from lowering fines to protect special interests, such as education lobbying groups. Regular audits should also be part of the Education Department’s approach; every three years, or at least once per administration, the government should audit a random selection of universities, prioritizing those with larger endowments and a history of receiving foreign gifts for more frequent reviews. This randomness would create incentives for universities to comply with the law while keeping enforcement costs down relative to a comprehensive audit. Coupling this with penalties for misreporting would hold universities accountable.
The Biden administration has ignored its responsibility to protect against the agendas of adversarial foreign regimes. Much more must be done to seriously address foreign influence at our universities.